Rating: 
Summary: A good starting point to start using UML for your projects
Review: I had been waiting for this book for well over 6 months !! And perhaps was expecting too much from it. Provides a lucid explanation of UML concepts and techniques. Worth reading for beginners as well as active practitioners. What I found lacking was mapping between source code and UML models as examples. Also, a full blown example of a complete model solving a real life problem would have helped in undestanding the application of UML constructs.
Rating: 
Summary: Well-written Book for Experts and Novices Alike
Review: Grady Booch (who I understand is the primary author) et al have written a very clear, concise book on UML. Many people, myself included, had been waiting for this book for well over a year. I must say the wait was worth it. The book is almost flawless. The book does not insult those who are familiar with the UML or modeling in general. Moreover, the book is fashioned such that novices will not be disappointed.The User Guide is superior to all the UML books I've seen thus far.
Rating: 
Summary: Definitely not the user guide
Review: I do software development for many years and this book definitely is not what usually assumed by "user guide" title. UML is a language, and it should be treated as a language. Therefore I would compare the content of this book to extensive description of the language grammar, which is very dry and useless subject for practical person. The book authors forgot that you cannot learn the language learning only its grammar - no way! Book does not show how language constructions actually work and what is the relative importance of different elements of the language when you try to describe your system. Every chapter finishes with bunch of general advises how to apply UML to describe your system, but never shows how actually to do it for a specific system. I read OMT book written by Rumbaugh and it was similar to this one. Both of them assumed that readers love UML/OMT for the sake of UML/OMT. It is pity that such an exciting subject was converted into boring text by the authors who don't know how to write useful books.
Rating:
Summary: A formidable weapon in any object modeling warrior's arsenal
Review: "The Unified Modeling Language User Guide" is a comprehensive study of the Object Management Group's (OMG) and Rational Corporation's Unified Modeling Language (UML). It is written by the three Amigo's; Grady Booch, James Rumbaugh and Ivar Jacobson (order appears to be important, just look at the other books in this series) and carries a date stamp of September, 1998. The discussion as presented by Booch et al. covers what appears to be a similar range of topics to the UML 1.3 version as specified by the OMG. This text is written in a clear concise fashion including a generous introduction to the object paradigm. The book goes on to present a fairly complete picture of the UML's basic notation and concepts. Further, a description of many of the object paradigm's advanced mechanisms including distribution, persistence, and real-time issues as modeled in UML is presented. A comprehensive glossary is accompanied by three fairly complete appendicies, a quick reference to UML notation and diagrams, a list of UML standard elements Stereotypes, Constraints and Tagged Values and an abridged guide to the Rational Unified Process (RUP). As a profesional object modeler I have exteremely dog eared copies of a few tried and true basic object paradigm texts. The first couple that come to mind are Booch's Object Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications and Rumbaug's Object Modeling Technique. The tattered state of these tombs is due to using both as reference on more times than I would care to mention. These books have proven to be the basic guide, the corner stone, to the object paradigm for most CS and IT professionals. "The Unified Modeling Language User Guide" should prove to be able to shoulder this tradition and become the newest OO Bible, a formidable weapon in any object modeling warrior's arsenal. All in all this book is a good read (one cup of caffine needed) and provides great object paradigm basics and UML references. Of course there are other books that discuss the same topics such as, UML in a Nutshell from O'REILLY, (two thumbs up), Instant UML from Wrox (translated from French), UML Distilled from Addison Wesley, (outdated and incomplete) amongst others. Overall, "The Unified Modeling Language User Guide" is a must for any object modelers library. Four and one half stars. P.S. The 1.4 version of the UML is supposed to be accepted by the OMG in an April, 1999 time frame, these additions to the UML are not fully describe in the "The Unified Modeling Language User Guide". For the most part the UML 1.4 version concerns the addition of some of Object-Time's Real-Time Object Oreinted Modeling (ROOM) concepts. **********************************************************************
Rating: 
Summary: Not for beginners
Review: Though authored by the authority and inventors of the subject, UML user guide lacks the literary elegance and simplicity that professional technical authors are able to bring in their work. The user guide is very comprehensive in its treatment of topics in UML - but the style does not aid novice with understanding the concepts. For example, examples used are very trivial and does not reflect the practical application of the concept. The book looks more like an attempt to make the technical specification sound more casual, but is not lucid, illustrative and easy. "UML distilled" by Martin Fowler scores high above this book. A PDF chapter from the "UML Distilled" on the sequence diagram is available on the net and it can be used to grasp the writing style of Mr. Fowler to aid in the pre-purchase decision.
Rating:
Summary: The Reference Manual is a better buy
Review: I have read both the User's Guide and the Reference Manual, which are generally intended to be bought as a pair. The Reference Manual is better organized, and is an invaluable resource for anyone who does a lot of UML modeling. This book, however, is just a dump of UML information, fairly ecletic but not always in sufficient depth. It is good information, but the poor organization makes it useless after the initial reading. If you are looking to learn UML, it IS possible to get a good feel for it from this book. However, something like "UML for Dummies" will also give you a good introduction, at a better price. If you will be modeling a lot, and want a deep understanding of UML, then it would be wiser to buy the Reference Manual instead.
Rating: 
Summary: More powerful than a barbiturate
Review: The guys who essentially invented UML wrote this book-the infamous `Three Amigos'. You would think that given that their book is about design they would have taken the time to make it visually appealing. Needless to say I should have judged this book by its cover. It sucked. To start with each chapter begins with an analogy on how building a house is like software design. When I started the book the analogy seemed appropriate, by chapter 31 I wanted to break someone's nose. Outside of the horrible cover design and redundant analogies the book is poorly organized. The book constantly refers to terms that it doesn't expound upon or for that matter define anywhere. For example, the authors refer over and over again to CRC Cards, but they're not defined anywhere in the book. What's worse, however, are the partially defined lists. For example the authors go to the trouble of informing you that there are four kinds of events in UML, but only bother to discuss three of them. Maddening! The chapters don't really follow a logical flow. The Three Amigos constantly skip backwards and forward throughout the book. In the side margins, almost as an afterthought they have included chapter references in blue type. If you follow the chapter references you're reading all over the place. Moreover, and perhaps most annoying of all is when they keep referring to concepts that they cover later in the book. I was paranoid that I day dreamed my way over the whole concept of the state machine until I discovered it nested away in chapter 21. Last but not least, the book is poorly written. Seriously, if you have to read this piece of crap you better brew a big pot of coffee. Technical literature can be a bit dry at times, but this is an exceptionally horrid piece of work. Death to the Three Amigos and a pox on Rational for hiring them! Don't buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Not a tutorial
Review: I didn't know much about UML when I started reading this book and feel that it's given me some good grounding. But I suspect that there are probably books on the subject that are specifically aimed at introducing it to beginners and do a more effective job of that. This is more of a reference book. It's well-cross referenced and I find it much more helpful for looking up individual terms, diagram types, etc. than when I read it front-to-back. What I was hoping to gain from the book is a better sense of when, where, and why you would be creating the different diagrams and how it all fits into a development life-cycle. Evidently, this kind of information is left to other "Three Amigos" books. I'm inclined to agree with other reviewers who feel that this book is "wordier" than it really needs to be. They repeatedly use an analogy to building a house that gets nearly as tiresome as it is obvious. But if you find UML to be useful, necessary, or just intersting, this would be a good book to have in your library.
Rating:
Summary: the champion of poor writing
Review: To somebody who knows OOP, UML can be explained in under 30 minutes. It is simple, OOP is not. OOD starts in the head of an OOP programmer. Patterns help! I heavily recommend Sams "Teach Yourself UML in 24 hours"
ISBN 0672322382 Make up your own mind by looking at the books locally first. Whoever wrote the Schaum's Outline on UML also engages in doubletalk that is convoluted and based on something in the head of the author. Too bad Stephen Prata, Stephen Kochan, Ivor Horton or Bruce Eckel didn't write on patterns or UML! So many books by Booch, Fowler and Larman are heavily padded...full of repetitious sentences that tell me nothing! A professor at a local university said "I read Booch's 1992 book on OOA 3 times and asked myself what I learned...nothing" Those are my words exactly! When I was in Junior High, there was a teacher whose punishment for chewing gum was to write a 10 page essay on the benefits of chewing gum. I'll tell you I never chewed gum. Can you imagine how much you have to pad the writing to get 10 pages. Concerning a recent Booch book, I emailed Grady Booch to ask where the black diamond (in an early chapter) was defined. A month later, back came "chapter 16". Good thing I already knew about aggregation and composites. These people just can't write. Why are there so many fans of these books?
There is honor amongst thieves, elitists and groupies!
Rating:
Summary: Are you ready to learn a forign language?
Review: Any software engineer should be ready to accept the learning curve of learning a new language when reading this book. This book will take the reader into semantics of the symbols in UML in light of the Object Oriented world. Object-Oriented terminology is a prerequisite for the reader; otherwise, it will be at best like reading Greek to the English reader. It is a textbook dealing with the grammar, vocabulary, structural modeling, and behavior modeling of UML. This book is excellent in its presentation of its subject matter. I cannot recommend this book enough. Be prepared before tackling this book.
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